Book Club: Big Pig, Little Pig by Jacqueline Yallop

The Book:

When Jacqueline moves to south-west France with her husband, she embraces rural village life and buys two pigs to rear for slaughter. But as she gets to know the animals better, her English sentimentality threatens to get in the way and she begins to wonder if she can actually bring herself to kill them. This is a memoir about that fateful decision, but it's also about the ethics of meat eating in the modern age, and whether we should know, respect and even love the animals we eat. Threaded throughout is the story of the Sapient Pig, (who was something of a celebrity in late 18th-century England), and an elegy to a rural France whose life and traditions are slowly dying out. At its heart, this book is a love story, exploring the increasing attachment of the author for her particular pigs, and celebrating the enduring closeness of humans and pigs over the centuries.

The Author: Jacqueline Yallop is the author of three novels and a history of Victorian collecting. She has a PhD in nineteenth-century literature and culture, and has worked as a museum curator in Manchester and Sheffield. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Aberystwyth.

Industry Reviews:

By turn, poignant, funny, educational and, yes, brutal . . . Yallop's skill lies in blending autobiography with lyrical nature writing. * Radio Times *

Quietly devastating . . . Yallop writes with great tenderness about the hogs as housekeepers and gourmands * Daily Telegraph *

A delightful and entertaining memoir * Woman and Home *

A beautifully written and quietly devastating account of raising two young pigs on [Yallop's] smallholding in the south of France * Frances Wilson, The New Statesman *

Ref: Booktopia Australia

Our Review:

Personally, this book was a challenge. I really didn’t enjoy reading about raising pigs. I was not surprised when I found the other members of the book club felt the same. As one member said, ”A waste of time.” I confess, it’s not often I don’t read a complete book but half way through I began to skip pages to get the book finished. I read enough to be able to take part in the club discussions on meeting day. This is a book of two stories; the story of Jaqueline and her husband Ed’s, inexperienced farmers, decision to raise two black weaners, for their meat, on a small holding in south east France. The other story was a fairly comprehensive collection of historical stories of a famous performing pig,”Bisset’s Pig” or “The Learned Pig”, and other pigs. The “Learned Pig” was a black pig that was trained by Bisset to perform mental tricks, such as selecting numbers in answer to questions of dates and other numbers, on stage throughout Ireland, UK and Europe during the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. The pig outlived Bisset and other owners to live a long life performing until his death. The main challenge the author and her husband faced was, could they raise these pigs and then kill and butcher them humanely at the end of a year. I must, admit, I don’t think I could or want to achieve this challenge. I guess this book would be very interesting to others who choose a life-challenge as these two did. Other- wise, forget it.